BMP: Next Generation
Contemporaneous

David Bloom is founding co-artistic director of Contemporaneous. A devoted advocate for new music, David has conducted over 200 world premieres at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He has been a guest conductor for NOW Ensemble, Present Music, ensemble mise-en, JACK Quartet, and Mantra Percussion, among others and has worked with such composers and artists as David Byrne, Donnacha Dennehy, Lucy Dhegrae, Dylan Mattingly, Missy Mazzoli, Andrew Norman, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Dawn Upshaw, and Julia Wolfe. Especially active as a conductor of new opera, David serves as music director on projects with Experiments in Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, PROTOTYPE Festival, New Amsterdam Presents, and Pig Iron Theater Company, among others. He has recorded for the Innova, New Amsterdam, Mexican Summer, Mona, Roven, and Starkland labels. Also a passionate educator, David is the orchestra conductor for Special Music School High School and the nation’s only new music youth orchestra, Face the Music. Along with Contemporaneous, he has led residencies at such institutions as City University of New York, the University of New Orleans, Williams College, and his alma mater, Bard College. Read more at davidbloomconductor.com.

Russian-born conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya serves as Music Director with Chicago Opera Theater.  She is also in residence at National Sawdust with the Refugee Orchestra Project and, until recently, served as the Artistic Director of Juventas New Music Ensemble and founder of the Boston New Music Festival.  Under her artistic leadership, Juventas New Music has produced annual operatic premieres and performances that cross disciplinary boundaries, including musical collaborations with robots, puppeteers, visual artists, circus performers, and more. Lidiya has become known as a champion of living composers and of lesser known Russian repertory operatic works.  Lidiya’s conducting engagements this season include Washington National Opera, Chicago Philharmonic, Spoleto Festival USA, Beth Morrison Projects, Wolftrap Opera, Opera Saratoga, Stamford Symphony, and a workshop of a new opera with The Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center. She is also a part of The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors and Marin Alsop’s Taki Concordia Fellowship and has previously served as assistant conductor to Maestro Lorin Maazel.  Previous positions include serving as conductor with Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, as a Chorus Master with Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops, Music Director with Commonwealth Lyric Theater, Music Director with Harvard’s Lowell House Opera.  More at www.LidiyaConductor.com

Luke Leonard (Stage Director) is an artist whose work spans the performing and visual arts.  He is the Founding Co-Artistic Director of Monk Parrots (www.monkparrots.org), a New York-based ensemble that creates concept driven live work through multidisciplinary collaboration.  His stage productions have been described as “taking creditable gambles…outstanding” by The New York Times, “bold and experimental…pure theatrical experience” by nytheatre.com, and “visually arresting” by The Austin American-Statesman.   Recent projects include the world premiere of The Scottish Opera, an 80 minute re-imagining of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth, and the Australian Premiere of Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang and Mac Wellman’s opera, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field.  Awards include a 2016 OperaChaser Award for Outstanding Lighting Design and a 2015 OperaChaser Award for Outstanding Stage Direction.  Luke is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA. In 2016, he served as Resident International Stage Director at Gertrude Opera in Melbourne, Australia.  Luke holds a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from The University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from Brooklyn College, City University of New York. (www.lukeleonard.com)

Contemporaneous is an ensemble of 21 musicians whose mission is to bring to life the music of now. Recently recognized for a “ferocious, focused performance” (The New York Times) and for its “passionate drive…setting an extremely high bar for other ensembles to live up to” (I Care If You Listen), Contemporaneous performs and promotes the most exciting work of living composers through innovative concerts, commissions, recordings, and educational programs. Based in New York City and active throughout the United States, Contemporaneous has performed for a wide range of presenters, including Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, PROTOTYPE Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, MATA Festival, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and Bang on a Can and is a 2017-2018 group-in-residence at National Sawdust. The ensemble has worked with artists as diverse as David Byrne, Donnacha Dennehy, Yotam Haber, Dawn Upshaw, and Julia Wolfe. Contemporaneous has premiered more than 100 works, many of them large-scale pieces by emerging composers. The ensemble has held educational residencies at such institutions as City University of New York, the University of New Orleans, Williams College, and Bard College, where the group was founded in 2010. Read more at contemporaneous.org.

Founded in 2006 to support the work of composers and their multi-media collaborators, Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) encourages risk-taking, creating a structure for new work that is unique to the artist and allows them to feel safe to experiment and push boundaries.

Noted as “the edge of innovation” (Opera News), Beth Morrison Projects is a “contemporary opera mastermind” (Los Angeles Times) and “its own genre” (Opera News). Projects have been performed in numerous premier venues around the world including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Disney Hall, The Barbican, Lincoln Center, The Walker Art Center, The Beijing Music Festival, The Holland Festival, and more. Current and upcoming projects include works by composers Mohammed Fairouz, Michael Gordon, Ted Hearne, Mikael Karlsson, David Lang, David T. Little, Keeril Makan, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Elvis Perkins, Paola Prestini, Ellen Reid, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Jeremy Schonfeld, Du Yun, and more, with directors Mallory Catlett, James Darrah, Rachel Dickstein, Lee Sunday Evans, Daniel Fish, Patricia McGregor, Kevin Newbury, Jay Scheib, and Ashley Tata. Projects have been performed in numerous premier venues around the world including Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Kitchen, Lincoln Center, The Walker Arts Center, The Beijing Music Festival, The Holland Festival, and more.

BMP is generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund for New Music, The Amphion Foundation, The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Emma A. Sheafer Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Jana Foundation, Jean & Louis Dreyfus Foundation, The Howard and Sarah D. Solomon Foundation, MAP Fund/Creative Capital Foundation, The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The New England Foundation for the Arts, New Music USA, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, OPERA America, and The Seniel Ostrow Foundation.

Jessie Downs is a composer, vocalist, and teaching artist for whom music is a medium for sharing personal experiences and entering into community with others. As a composer, her aesthetic is one which treasures the uncanny and surprising beauty of wild yet delicate things. Her favorite compositional media include found objects, altered instruments, and the human voice. She has premiered numerous works by other living composers, as a solo vocalist and with her ensemble the Sotto Voce Vocal Collective. Her vocal training has involved both long-term tutelage under master bel canto pedagogue Franco Bertacci and attendance at contemporary vocal music workshops with such luminaries as Jeff Gavett and Juliet Fraser. In both her performances and compositions, she aims to compellingly combine the new and the old. She holds a BMus in Composition from Oberlin Conservatory and is currently a PhD candidate in Composition at the University at Buffalo.

Noah Kaplan is a composer and saxophonist from Topanga Canyon, CA. Kaplan has composed for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, JACK quartet, PRISM quartet, So Percussion, and the American Modern Ensemble, among others. He co-leads the indie pop band Dollshot and is currently collaborating with screenwriter Hampton Fancher (Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049) on Salvation, an opera trilogy. The Noah Kaplan Quartet has recorded two albums for HatHut Records, Descendants (2011) and Cluster Swerve (2017). Noah is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University where he is a Naumburg and Mark Nelson doctoral fellow. He was the recipient of a Tanglewood Composition Fellowship in 2016. In addition to composing and improvising, he produces new classical and experimental music for Underwolf Records. He recently edited a new English edition of Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Manual of Quarter-Tone Harmony, published by Underwolf Editions in 2017. He lives in Brooklyn.

Active as a composer and performer, Molly Joyce’s music has been described as “impassioned” (The Washington Post), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “vibrant, inventive music that communicates straight from the heart” (Prufrock’s Dilemma). Her works have been commissioned and performed by several distinguished ensembles including the New World Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and the New Juilliard, Decoda, and Contemporaneous ensembles. Additionally, her work has been performed at the Bang on a Can Marathon and VisionIntoArt’s FERUS Festival, and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, WNYC’s New Sounds, Q2 Music, I Care If You Listen, and The Log Journal. As a performer, Molly often plays on her vintage Magnus toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay and has performed on in multiple capacities; including solo, with toy piano, and with a beatboxer. She is additionally active as a DJ, spinning under the moniker “DJ MJ.” mollyjoycemusic.com.

Michael Lanci is a composer and educator residing in Saratoga Springs, New York. His music is viscerally engaging, stylistically diverse, drawing from a wide range of influences. Recent projects include a collection of five protest songs dedicated to nineteenth century singer-songwriter and labor rights activist Joe Hill. His works have been performed at the Midwest Composers Symposium, Edmont Fringe Festival, Orford Festival, Detroit Bureau of Sound and Vox Novus Festival. He has received commissions from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Beyond Pluck, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Klangpar2 and Vive! Ensemble; along with performances by the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra, Hypercube, All of the Above, Duo d’Entre Deux and Decho Ensemble. Michael holds a B.M. in piano performance from SUNY Albany, where he also studied composition with Max Lifchitz and a M.M. in composition from SUNY Fredonia, studying with Rob Deemer. Michael earned his D.M.A. in composition from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati studying with Michael Fiday.

Matt McBane is a composer whose music draws on simple arithmetic and the subconscious; classical minimalism and avant pop; fiddle music and analog synthesizers. He has been described as “a natural composer, a fresh voice” by the Los Angeles Times and his projects range from “Bathymetry,” a collection percussion quartets with synthesizer for the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet to “Drawn,” a 25-min suite for bluegrass string band released on the Jake Schepps Quintet’s album “Entwined.” Matt is the violinist and composer for his Brooklyn-based instrumental band, Build, which released two albums on New Amsterdam records and has been described by New York Magazine as a “rocking post-classical quintet which takes inspiration from minimalist chamber music, instrumental rock, modal jazz, and more.” He is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Carlsbad Music Festival, widely known for its programming of “adventurous music by the beach” and he is a doctoral fellow at Princeton University.

Emma O’Halloran is an Irish composer, producer and performer whose work moves freely between acoustic and electronic forces. Emma has written for orchestra, folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, and laptop orchestra. Her work has been performed at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and MATA Festival, and she has collaborated with artists such as Crash Ensemble, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. In addition to concert music, Emma composes for film and theatre, and performs with her band Games Violet, a duo of producer-performers that make hybrid rock/electronic music. Emma considers much of her music to be reflective, often trying to map real or imagined moments in time to gain a deeper understanding of her own personal experiences. Emma is currently completing a doctorate at Princeton University. When not composing, she can be found hiking, practicing yoga, and flying high on aerial trapeze.

Gemma Peacocke is a US-based composer from New Zealand. She combines acoustic instruments and voices with electronics, and her work often has a sociopolitical focus. Her multimedia song cycle, Waves + Lines, based on Eliza Griswold’s book I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, premiered in June 2017 at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn with the support of a commission from the Jerome L Green Foundation. Her song cycle Pacific, for chamber choir, piano four-hands and electronics was premiered by the Tudor Consort at the National Cathedral in Wellington, New Zealand, in September 2017 with the support of a PADET grant. Gemma was the Creative New Zealand Edwin Carr Scholar for 2014 and 2015 towards her studies with Julia Wolfe at NYU Steinhardt, and a 2015 Bang on a Can composition fellow. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in composition at Princeton University. gemmapeacocke.com

Matthew Recio is an avid vocal composer and has been nationally recognized for his work in the field. He was recently named the 2017 American Prize winner in the choral composition category and this past May his opera In Memoriam (libretto by Molly Korroch) was premiered by New Voices Opera. Recio is a two-time winner of the NOTUS Competition, a featured composer at the 2016 ACDA Convention, a winner of the Cincinnati Camerata Competition, finalist in the YNYC competition, and a finalist in the Morton Gould Awards. William Stowman’s newly released CD, “A Timeless Place” (Klavier Records Label) features Recio’s song cycle Chronology of Storms, with poetry written by Jenna Lanzaro. As a composer of instrumental works, Recio has been represented at the Midwest Composer Symposium, the UNK Music Festival, and the Hammer and Nail Dance collaboration. His chamber works have been recognized in the IMTA young artist competition and the Quartet Nouveau competition. He is a composition fellow alumnus for the IMANI Winds Chamber Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, the Valencia International Performing Arts Program, Yale’s Norfolk Chamber Series and Donald Nally’s award-winning choir “The Crossing.” A Summa Cum Laude graduate of Ithaca College (B.M. Composition and Music Education), Recio is pursuing his D.M. in music composition. matthewrecio.com

Daniel Sabzghabaei (دانیال سبزقبایی) (ASCAP) is a composer and vocalist whose work aims to emphasize the malleability of time and how we experience it, not just in the concert hall but in everyday life as well. His music has been performed and commissioned by organizations such as: Hong Kong’s Intimacy of Creativity Festival, the New York Festival of Song, Minnesota’s VocalEssence, Dallas’ Voices of Change, Seattle’s The Esoterics, the Busan Choral Festival, Korea’s Ansan City Choir, Romania’s ICon Arts Festival, Festivalul Internațional Craiova Muzicală, and Pittsburgh-based OvreArts, to name a few. As of late, Daniel has been increasingly interested in his Persian heritage, seriously studying and taking inspiration from Persian melodic and rhythmic systems, Persian folk music, and Persian art and poetry. Daniel is currently a doctoral student and Sage Fellow at Cornell University, studying with Roberto Sierra, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, and Kevin Ernste. danielsabzghabaei.com

With works described as “visceral” (Lucid Culture), “propulsive” (Bachtrack) and “austere” (New Music Box), composer Leaha Maria Villarreal’s output includes music for dance, film, opera, and the concert hall. She has worked with organizations and ensembles such as Beth Morrison Projects and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; ETHEL and Friends concert series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; andPlay; Wild Rumpus; JACK Quartet; Experiments in Opera; and TRANSIT New Music, among others. Past composition teachers include Roger Reynolds, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, and Chinary Ung. Villarreal holds a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego and an M.M. from New York University where she studied with Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon. She is a co-founder of contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant; a Jerome Fund for New Music recipient; and taught composition with New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Bridge Program. Villarreal is pursuing a D.M.A. at the University of Southern California.